Review keeps fledgling funding body on its toes

Page Tools

Winning moves ... Matthew Lawrence was named Telstra Young Ballet Dancer of the Year in 2004 in a partnership between Telstra and the Australian Ballet that won a foundation award.Photo: Simon Schluter

A body created to find outside funding for the arts is asking for
more money, writes Lauren Martin.

The Australia Business Arts Foundation emerged five years ago
with $1 million from Canberra and a brief to find more money -
somewhere else - for the arts. It has divided opinion ever since.
Now at a crossroads, the foundation faces the challenge of finding
a new executive, finalising a draft business plan and finessing
more money from government. As it does so, it's had to fend off an
Australia Council proposal to swallow it up whole.

The foundation grew out of the Foundation for Culture and the
Humanities, established by the Keating government. Inspired by the
US National Endowment for the Humanities, it never quite found
focus and ended up funding civics projects. It was remade under the
Howard Government in 2000, and for cynics in the arts the name
change said it all: "culture and the humanities" were out,
"business" was in.

The new foundation's aim was "to create a culture" in which
business and individuals would give money to the arts. Problem is,
it's hard to quantify a "culture" or who should get credit for
creating it.

The Sydney Theatre Company's deputy manager, Craig Hassall, says
he was "one of the biggest cynics" when the foundation began. "They
were not a funding body, so they weren't going to give us any money
... but they were getting money," he says.

Worse, the foundation wasn't going to broker deals for them. So
why wouldn't the Government just invest the money into arts
directly, instead of this middleman?

Some are still baffled, and too bitter to be quoted. But
Hassall, preparing to leave the STC for London, is converted: "They
have legitimised the arts as a collaborative corporate partner in a
way that could never have been done if the money had gone straight
to arts companies."

Now the foundation is losing its founding executive director,
Winsome McCaughey, and scrambling to settle a seven-year strategy
(2006-12) that, in McCaughey's words, will convince the Federal
Government to "significantly increase" its resources. There will be
a departmental review this year, but the foundation has been doing
its own consultations in preparation.

Already it has achieved a budget increase from the Federal
Government. It gets $1.6 million annually, although that is well
short of the $6 million sought by the Liberal Party heavyweight Ron
Walker when, as chairman, he oversaw the name and directional
change.

With a board now led by the Woolworths chairman, James Strong,
the foundation's new executive director will inherit a more
high-profile, well-connected and finely honed organisation than
McCaughey did when she arrived seven years ago, after a series of
top executives had left in quick succession. The billionaire
philanthropist Richard Pratt put in $1 million and talked more than
100 chief executives into meeting McCaughey. She started annual
award dinners (the main arts event on John Howard's calendar), and
boasts 100 corporate "councillors" who give money to the foundation
and host events where arts companies can meet business
decision-makers.

The new executive director can expect a salary of around
$170,000 a year, one of the most lucrative in the arts. The
headhunter Mark Lelliott, from Highland Partners, says the board
has met a field of candidates, because "a role like this ...
attracts significant interest and there has been a broad spectrum
of strong applicants within and outside the organisation".
McCaughey is staying until next month, and then as a
consultant.

She has developed the foundation to a level that she no longer
wants to manage. Looking back, she admits it hasn't always been
well understood. But corporate consideration for supporting the
arts has grown, she says. Meanwhile, "over the years arts
organisations have become much more sophisticated at how they
customise their programs".

So has the foundation. It aims to boost three things: corporate
partnerships, private philanthropy and corporate volunteering for
the arts. To do this nationally, it has become "a national resource
centre, co-ordinator, skills developer" that works through all
levels of government (with formal partnerships in two states and a
growing number of local councils trained to make business-arts
connections, with back-up advice from the foundation).

It has created practical tools, with a Red Book to help arts
companies pitch for support, and a companion Blue Book for business
to get maximum results from arts sponsorship. A Purple Book offers
sample contracts. A Gold Book features "best-practice"
partnerships, which Hassall says spark ideas for lateral
connections. Last year, in a partnership between Telstra and the
Australian Ballet that won a foundation award, audiences chose
Matthew Lawrence as the Telstra Young Ballet Dancer of the Year,
voting via SMS or email.

There are more guides coming, targeting individual
philanthropy.

A former Australian Ballet manager, Ian McRae, says this is a
crucial area for small- and medium-sized arts companies. More
Australians are earning more, he says, and "recognising ... that
with a smaller arts company they can make a real difference".

McRae, chairman of the Australia Council's Theatre Board, says
many arts organisations have "close to exhausted the benefits they
have to offer" in corporate sponsorships. Philanthropy will grow,
he says, but "it's a relationship business" and arts executives
have to personally make connections with patrons. This is where the
foundation can only do so much, because it doesn't broker
individual deals.

Where it does broker relationships is in its widely praised
adviceBank program, which matches corporate expertise with arts
companies in need. The former Sydney Symphony chief Mary
Vallentine, consulting recently for the Australian Music Centre,
used adviceBank to engage an IT specialist for a complex,
short-term, pro bono contract. "It was very valuable," she
says.

The Song Company, a small but internationally recognised Sydney
ensemble, has had adviceBank placements for legal and financial
work which have resulted in long-term relationships. The Song
Company's general manager, Joanne Kee, says: "KPMG is going to host
a concert in September in their building, where we'll move all
around the place."

McCaughey calls adviceBank the foundation's most cost-effective
way of getting relationships established. Still, it is labour
intensive. The foundation ensures the arts company involved has
strictly audited its needs, so that no volunteer's time or skill is
wasted.

"We are careful about who we introduce to whom, because we may
have a company like KPMG with many [separate adviceBank placements]
and you don't want to throw them a doozey," she says. "It has to be
the right fit."

It's this kind of thing which demands the Commonwealth make a
"more substantial" contribution, she says. "It's a real struggle to
keep the national engine running [with current funding]." The
internal review "is a platform for negotiations [which the
foundation hopes will lead to] significantly increased
resources".

McCaughey says the foundation's flexible, business-driven model
is its strength. "The arts know they need private support, but for
the private sector arts is often not even on the radar - that's why
having top business people in each state committed to getting their
peers to do it is so important."

So McCaughey is bemused that the necessarily more bureaucratic
Australia Council, which administers more than $100 million in
grants each year, last year proposed taking over the foundation.
"I'm aware of it, but both James Strong and myself have been
advised by the minister that it is dead in the water," she says.
The Arts Minister, Rod Kemp, supports the foundation as a separate
organisation.

Still, won't the Government look unfavourably on giving more
money to a body created to find outside funding? McCaughey says
no.

"My sense is that the public servants recognise that ongoing
seed money is needed to foster the investment of others," she says.
"If the Commonwealth is happy to make a relatively small
commitment, it is leadership for the corporate and individual
sector - it is good business."